


The Weapons With Which You Are Armed

by ruebellab



Category: Beauty and the Beast (1991), Beauty and the Beast (2017), Beauty and the Beast - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Feelings, Fluff and Angst, Monster Boyfriend, UST, the beast stays a beast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-12-03 11:09:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11530965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruebellab/pseuds/ruebellab
Summary: He stares down at it, momentarily deaf to the sound of her voice and the page she is reading. Her hand is so small and yet there is so much power in her touch, he can feel it.It is as though there’s a light flowing from her fingertips, the life force of a burning sun pouring out of her and basking him in warmth.





	The Weapons With Which You Are Armed

**Author's Note:**

> angsty beast thoughts and some monster boyfriend goodies for those of us who wish he never changed back to a man - not your thing, move along :)

It’s enlightening, that afternoon in the snow, in more ways than one.

They walk a while, side by side, out through the castle grounds and into the gardens. The snow is a fresh white carpet that crunches under the weight of their feet and when they come to a small stone bench under a trellised archway woven through with roses, he brushes the snow aside and lays out his cloak so that she might sit and keep her skirts dry.

Despite the cold, the indeterminable season, the roses are in bloom, and though they are full and pale, and nothing at all like the one that fills his chambers with that glittering pink glow, they do not fail to remind him of what is at stake.

Belle is talking - and he’s listening, he is, but he cannot help but notice the trail of footprints they have left behind them on the snowy path. His are large, the clawed indentations of an animal’s paws, next to hers, half the size and well, foot shaped.

She must have to walk swiftly, to keep up with his longer strides, he observes, looking at the trail of quick little steps. They nearly double those his own feet have made, and he makes a note to himself to slow his pace.

When he returns his attention to her face, her rich brown eyes sparkling, the cream of her skin now reddened with cold, he wonders if she would shy away from him if he reached out to brush the snowflakes from her hair.

After some time they return to the castle, and Belle links her arm with his as they walk together, somehow nearer than before.

It must be the cold, he thinks, even as his belly twists and leaps into his throat, nearly strangling him with a hope that feels almost shameful.

Instead of going in, Belle produces a small sack of birdseed from somewhere inside the folds of her dress.

Winter is hard, she says as she kneels, scattering a handful of seed over the snow, food is scarce, and it’s a simple kindness to help all creatures great and small.

He wonders if she counts him in there somewhere, but he won’t ask.

Instead, he takes the seed she offers him, and they feed the birds together.

Somehow it hardly bothers him that he makes a complete fool of himself, first frightening the little creatures, and then ending up like one of those ghastly stone gargoyles a top the castle, bird droppings all down the back of his cloak.

It’s hard to care about the little things like that when she is laughing and smiling and touching him so gently.

He finds himself staring at her more than once that afternoon too, and if Belle notices, she doesn’t say a word about it.

He thinks she must though - how else could she have caught him so unawares with a few of those snowballs.

She is beautiful.

She is warm and radiant and he wonders just how she hasn’t begun to melt the snow around her - he certainly feels as though he’s about to melt. 

Later when he tells Cogsworth this - that he’s never felt this way about anyone, he starts to understand why.

He won’t say it just yet, but he thinks he just may be falling in love with her.

That night though, when he’s back in the desolate hollow of the west wing, far away from her light and her beauty, her sweet voice and gentle hands, he tells himself it doesn’t matter.

It’s hopeless - she will never love him and he is a fool for trying.

But then the morning comes and after breakfast, he’s leading her to the library, his heart thumping away against his ribs, and as he watches her eyes flutter open and her face spread with awe and joy at the sight, he knows he is helpless.

They spend hours in the library, both together and Belle on her own too - and why should she not, it is hers now and she is free to move about the castle as she wishes.

Still he finds himself seeking her out.

He cannot get enough of the sound of her voice, and in the days to come, he asks her to read as often as she is willing - which surprisingly is quite often indeed. 

He thinks she must be tiring of him. He tells himself this will be the last time he asks her - the last book and then he’ll leave her be to enjoy her gift, but each time he fails.

And somehow, though he barely moves a muscle, the space between them seems to shrink until it’s all but disappeared.

He must be imagining it, but it is as though she is looking for excuses to touch him.

They sit side by side in the library, a stack of books spread out on the table before them, and as Belle reads aloud, her free hand settles on his arm, absently stroking along the fur, down over the back of his great paw like hands and slips her fingers between his.

He stares down at it, momentarily deaf to the sound of her voice and the page she is reading. Her hand is so small and yet there is so much power in her touch, he can feel it.

It is as though there’s a light flowing from her fingertips, the life force of a burning sun pouring out of her and basking him in warmth.

She pauses a moment and withdraws her hand to flip the page and he finds himself bereft of the contact, empty and longing until it’s back again, settled in his wide palm.

He looks at her from the corner of his eye, just in time to catch the slight smile that’s playing around her lips, the little hint of pink in her cheeks, but then she’s clearing her throat and pressing on, voice sure and confident.

He who makes no test, oh Love, of your great power,  
Hopes in vain ever to bear witness to heaven’s highest power,  
He does not know how at the same time,  
One can live and die,  
How one can search for ill and flee from good,  
How one can love oneself less than another,  
How often the heart is frozen and melted by fear and hope,  
He does not know how men and gods in equal measure  
Dread the weapons with which you are armed.

When Belle reaches the end of the poem, he feels her fingers twitch as though she might withdraw again to turn the page, but instead they move featherlight over the rough skin of his palm and she turns to look at him.

“I thought you said this was a play about politics,” he says, raising a thick brow, 

“It is,” she laughs, and then asks him, “do you think it’s true?”

She sounds fearless as ever and yet there’s something a little shy about the way she’s looking at him.

Yes, he wants to say - without a doubt, but he cannot yet give himself away.

"It certainly could be," he says instead, but his voice comes out far deeper than he intends and he thinks he must be imaging it, because he swears, beside him he can feel her shiver.

“Perhaps I’ll find out one day,” she says and he will not, will not allow himself to hope it is someday soon.

She does not love him, not yet, maybe not ever, but he begins to wonder if she may just feel something for him after all.

Soon he begins reading to her too.

They spend some evenings curled up on the sofa, Belle with her feet in his lap, or her head on his shoulder.

He cannot get enough of her touch - every blessed point of contact feels as though her radiance is pouring into him, shining light into all his deepest darkest corners and he can only hope she takes some pleasure in his touch in turn.

He suspects she might.

Beyond the beauty of her face, her touch and the sound of her voice, he can smell her too.

His mind may be that of a man’s but like his beastly body, his senses are stronger, more acute. Hearing, sight, and smell most of all, and so over time he has come to know the scent of her joy, her longing, when she is in a temper and when she’s frightened, and lately something else, something new.

He had first noted the scent that afternoon in the snow. It had been brief but it had stood out clearly as new and unfamiliar and so deliciously enticing he had been hard pressed not to abandon their game and follow it to it’s source.

He’s caught it since then, more and more often now - and though he has his suspicions he will not dare to name it for what it is.

Belle smells like dandelions and fresh snow and sunshine, she is life and light, sweet and pure and it is a pleasure just to breathe her in, but this new scent - it’s something more, something darker, richer, like autumn leaves on the forest floor, only sharp and tangy in a way that catches on his tongue and makes him salivate like the beast he is.

When he has his hands - paws - on her, steadying her waist when she climbs down a ladder with an armful of books, when they’re curled up together in front of the fire and he can’t help but touch her soft stockinged feet, press his thumbs into her arches, rub at her soles, trail up to her ankles, ever so careful that his claws never catch in the silk.

And it’s so strong now, he can barely stand it.

Belle is asleep on the sofa.

They had read tonight, longer than usual, taking turns to pass the book back and forth, until she had handed it to him, fitted herself against his side, nuzzled into the silky fur under his arm and listened to him take his turn.

One of her hands had settled across his chest, and somewhere in between waking and sleep, she had let out a contented little moan.

By god, he thinks later as he’s carrying her to her room, sound asleep in his arms, what he would give to hear that again, to be the reason a sound like that was uttered from her lips.

He tries not to let the animal side of himself lead, but more often than not, he fails. 

He has told himself that until now that he has not known what that delicious inviting scent truly is, but the most beastly parts of him disagree.

It is the scent of her attraction, her arousal, and though she may not yet love him, she is certainly excited by him.

It would be an understatement to say he feels the same.

He lays her down gently on top of the covers and lingers just a moment to look at her and though he has made no sound, been as careful as he can, still she stirs. 

“I knew you would come to me,” she says, her eyelids fluttering, half focused on his face, half in a dream.

“Your eyes,” she says as she lifts a hand to stroke across his brow and down his cheek, “so blue, so beautiful and you…”

Belle trails off, her fingertips coming to rest at his mouth and he does not know why, but he parts his lips for her.

Her fingers slip inside until he’s curling his long rough tongue around them, sliding it in between them in a way that makes her gasp.

He looms over her, one arm braced on the bed at her side, the other, carefully smoothing the lose hairs away from her face, and she looks back at him, wanton and dreaming.

She is so beautiful.

His body aches for her, and though he wishes for nothing more than hands made of skin and bone with which to touch her, and a mouth with soft lips she would not hesitate to kiss, his animal side doesn’t care. It knows what it wants, tells him in a whisper in the back of his mind to follow that musky scent of arousal down her throat, her breasts, over her belly and between her legs and lick her there until she’s panting and whimpering.

It wants to - and truth be told he wants it too, for they are one in the same no matter how he tries to distance himself from the beastly part of his mind - to flip her onto her belly, lift her hips and sink his teeth into her neck, spend himself all over her and rub the scent of his seed into her skin.

He won’t do any of these things, but by god does he want to.

He takes her hand, and with one last sweep of his tongue, he pulls back, drawing her fingers from his mouth and presses something like a kiss to the soft skin of her palm.

She arches up as if to follow him, and her hand slides down the fur on his chest, softly petting, gently scratching, tangling in the closure of his cloak and holding him still. 

“Don’t go,” she says, and it is then that he knows he must.

“You’re dreaming, Belle,” he tells her, even as he bows his head to meet hers.

He holds himself there, breathing her in, his great fanged mouth but an inch away from her own parted lips.

“I’m not,” she argues, with a little shake of her head, “if I were, you would stay. You always stay when I dream of you.”

He growls then, quite without meaning to, low and deep, and at first he thinks he has frightened her because she gasps, but a second later when her scent, already so strong and rich and inviting seems to intensify even more still, he knows it is not out of fear.

“Belle,” he warns her - though what it is he is warning her against, even he isn’t sure.

His cock is hard and thick, and it feels trapped inside his trousers, throbbing and desperate for touch, but he pulls back his hips, putting what distance between them he can, all the while unwilling to leave her as he knows he must.

“I’m not afraid of you,” she tells him, tipping her chin to nuzzle her face against his own, brushing her lips over the corner of his mouth.

And she may not be afraid of him, he knows she’s telling the truth, but he cannot allow this to go any farther.

Even if she does not fear him, he cannot continue to let himself touch her, not when the animal inside him is roaring it’s demand for release.

He is the one who is frightened.

He leaves her then. In a swirl of his cloak he’s out of the room and bounding away through the castle to the safety of the west wing.

Once inside, he throws himself against the solid weight of the closed door, digging his claws into the wood, and tips his head back, howling his longing, his frustration into the night.

And he stays like that for some time, until his blood no longer feels as though it is boiling with want for her, until the throbbing between his legs has settled to a dull ache, and he staggers across the room, collapsing at the foot of the delicate little table where the enchanted rose sits.

There are just two petals left - he can see them clearly, illuminated soft pink and glittering, as the others lay dark and shrivelled on the tabletop.

Time is running out.

-

In the days following, Belle says nothing of that night, and he is grateful for it.

Nothing much has changed, they still take their meals together, walk through the gardens or the woods, spend hours reading by the fire. Still he feels as though there is something between them, like a crackling bolt of lightning, sizzling and sparking each time he meets her eye.

He feels as though he might burst into flames.

But he doesn’t - as much as his body feels as though it is burning for her, longing for her touch, and desperate in turn to touch her too, to bring her comfort and pleasure.

It comes to a head the night they dance.

She is so beautiful he hardly knows what to do with himself.

She is glowing and golden - complete and utter perfection, and he tries to find the words to tell her so, that he’s never seen anything so beautiful in all his life.

He can’t quite manage that, but he tells her she looks lovely nonetheless.

After a dinner in which he can confidently say he hadn’t made an utter fool of himself, arm in arm they take to the ballroom. 

Belle sets his hands in place, one sliding over the yellow silk at her waist, the other held tight in her own gloved one, and under soft candle light, they move about the room, drifting to the music as though they were a pair of floating feathers.

Not that he feels much like a feather at all. 

He cannot help but pull her close and take his turn to erase the distance between them. To guide her and lift her and move her across the floor, to bring her so close, press her against him in a way that sends a tremulous thrill through his massive body.

Belle seems quite similarly affected - she looks up at him, radiant and joyful, and her scent, god be good, it is rich and musky and he aches to taste her, to drink from her lips, lap at every inch of her skin and bury his head between her thighs.

And late that night, when they finish with dancing, breathlessly making their way to sit on the terrace under a sky of twinkling silver stars, his body strung so tight with need, heart so full of love for her he feels as though he might burst, he brings himself to do the thing he knows he must.

"Are you happy here?" He asks her, and though he knows she cannot possibly give the answer he wishes for, he only hopes she will not lie.

She doesn’t.

And soon after, she is gone.

He watches her go from the top balcony, a roar of desperate pain ripping from his chest.

This time, he knows, really truly knows, that all is lost.

That night, another petal falls and only one is left behind.

-

He withdraws deep into his chambers, taciturn and forlorn. 

He loves her, with every last part of his wretched self, and it is a pain unimaginable to know that’s not enough.

He will never regret letting her go, no matter how it breaks his heart.

It was the right thing to do - the only thing to do, and he could not have lived with himself if he hadn’t.

He reminds himself of this, as he hides himself away, brooding in the dark and trying, and failing not to stare hopelessly at the nearly bare rose in it’s glittering glass dome, but he hates himself still.

Not because he will be forever trapped in this monstrous body, but because it means he has damned the souls of this castle too.

He doesn’t look at them when he tells them - he cannot bear to see their faces. He has failed them, and he hates himself for it.

So later on, when the villagers storm the castle with their torches and pitchforks, he does nothing.

He does nothing even as a hunter descends upon him, as he lashes out first with cruel words intent upon rousing his temper and then with fists and weapons, demanding a fight.

He doesn’t give him one. 

Belle is gone, he is out of time, and soon, the curse will take them all - he has nothing worth fighting for.

He does nothing, even as the hunter hits him blow after blow, even as the man snarls and spits Belle’s name into his face, laughing at him, taunting him.

He does nothing.

Not until she comes.

And never in his wildest fantasies would he have dreamed she would return.

But there she is, calling to him - to the hunter, Gaston, too, begging him to lay down his weapon, and somewhere inside himself he finds a reason to fight.

He is more than a match for the hunter, stronger and more fierce than the man’s wildest nightmare and it takes little for Gaston to reduce himself to a whimpering shuddering mass on the cold stone tile.

He will not kill him, even as his instinct calls for blood. He could rip him in two, spill his guts and feast on his flesh but he will not.

He may look the beast, he may play the part now and then, but where it matters, he is more than that. 

So he roars at the man to get out, get out and never return and Gaston seems all too willing to comply, sinking away into the shadows. 

He turns to Belle then. 

Sometime during the fight, it had begun to snow, and he sees her, waiting for him, her eyes wide and bright, her face pained and worried and yet still so beautiful, snowflakes in her hair.

But he cannot reach her, no not with the searing pain that has bloomed across his back.

And when he hears her scream as he collapses on the balcony at her feet, he knows it’s over.

Maybe it’s time to let go, he thinks, maybe it’s supposed to end like this.

He finds the strength to open his eyes, even as the life pours out of him, scarlet and steaming on the cold stone. He feels the stroke of her fingertips on his brow - sees the sparkle of tears on her cheeks, his vision is blurring, his voice is weak, but he tells her not to worry.

At least I got to see you, one last time.

He is happy to die in her arms.

-

But he doesn’t.

He doesn’t feel the way she crushes into him, pressing her lips into his own slack mouth.

He doesn’t hear her desperate plea - come back, she cries - she demands, don’t leave me.

And he certainly doesn’t hear her whispered promise of love.

He wakes days later in a room that is not his own.

Through a small gap in the curtains, an early morning light filters into the room, and he looks from the bed to the furniture that surrounds him. He knows this place, and yet somehow he does not recognise it.

He on the other hand is quite the same. Even as he rests, in a fine bed of silk and down, he feels his own body has not changed at all. He doesn't need to lift a clawed hairy paw to his face or call for a looking glass to know this to be true.

He is exactly the same, save perhaps for a few new scars. 

And he knows too, without having to look, that the last petal has fallen.

She does not love him.

And for evermore a monster he will stay.

He realizes a second later, that she is there, Belle is asleep, curled in an armchair next to the bed, dress rumpled, a book open in her lap as though she has spent long hours at his side.

Why he wonders, even as his heart swells at the sight of her. Why has she stayed?

She is free to go - he made that clear, and yet not only did she return, here she sits.

She is beautiful and he loves her, but he can never, will never, be the man she deserves - the one he knows she must want.

The door to the room opens with a soft click and at the sight of the woman who enters, he sits abruptly.

He blinks hard, wondering if perhaps this is all but a dream - he has not seen that face in many years.

"Hush now," Mrs Potts clucks as she sets a tea tray at the foot of the bed. “You’ll wake her, and she does need her rest - quite the evening she’s had worrying herself over you.”

When he blinks and blinks again, unwilling to trust his own eyes, the housekeeper laughs softly.

“How,” he breathes, a hint of a growl catching in the back of his throat, “how can you be -”

“Human again? Well, dear, that’s all down to your beauty there, the castle is as it was, we are as we were, and perhaps she came a little too late to make you a man again, but she brought you just enough magic to save your life.”

“How?” He says again - and though he needs to know the whole of it, there is a part of him that is afraid of what the housekeeper will say. “That doesn’t mean she loves me.”

“But it does my dear, and before you argue I’ve heard her say so countless time since you’ve been wrapped up in that bed, coming back to life.”

Mrs Potts sighs and goes on. “I think she thinks if she says it enough she still can break the enchantment.”

“She knows?” 

And he feels a hot flush of shame at this, laying himself heavily against the pillows, turning his head to look at Belle’s sleeping form.

“Told her everything last night,” Mrs Potts nods, and soon after she’s leaving the room in silence once more.

He hardly knows whether or not to believe her - it is obvious, he is still a beast, but the castle staff are human again, the castle itself feels different somehow and when he rolls his shoulders and flexes the muscles of his back, he feels pain and stiffness but he knows it is nothing  
to what it could have been.

He was dying, but he doesn’t feel like a dead man, or a slain beast for that matter.

He feels as whole as he can, for someone who is set to spend the rest of their days a monster.

The weight of that thought cuts through him and it’s almost enough to make the soft rays of sunshine stretching across the coverlet feel like shards of glass.

There is a soft sight then, a yawn and Belle is a awake - the scent of her seeming to blossom into the room, first that of her worry, then her joy at seeing he too is awake. 

“I thought I lost you,” she says, scrambling from her chair. the book slips from her lap and falls to the floor and then there’s only a moment of hesitation before she throws proprietary out the window and climbs up onto the bed.

She throws her arms around him, burying her face into his neck and he takes her in. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, and he can smell the wet hint of salt in the air - feel her tears trickling into his fur. “I’m sorry I didn’t come in time, this is all my fault.”

“No,” he says, his voice grinding out from somewhere deep within his chest, “you came back, and that’s all that matters.”

“But you’re…” Belle starts, and even as she is unable to find her words, he understands.

“I am, and I will likely stay this way forever.”

He cannot help but sound defeated, and in a way he is - he is a beast, and he will now remain so, if the enchantress is to be believed.

"But it doesn’t matter now," he adds, because in other ways, it really doesn’t.

“How can you say that?” she argues. “You can’t truly mean it.”

“I can,” he says - he does. “Everyone else - they're human again, they have been released from a curse that was never theirs to bear. And I will live. My wounds have healed, I might still be a monster, but I will live.”

It is the truth. 

Judgement has passed, this is his sentence - this is what he is. 

“You’re not a monster.”

He doesn’t want to argue, not when it would be so easy to just sink into her, hold her close and let the rest wash away but he cannot let it pass. 

“Look at me, Belle.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, grasping at him tighter still, “I knew, and I didn’t tell you - I knew I loved you but I said nothing.”

He will not - cannot blame her, but still this admission is a shock to him.

“You love me?” he says, even as Mrs Potts had told him this not an hour ago - he must hear her say it for herself for him to believe it to be true.

“I do. I love you, I love you,” she weeps, pulling back to look into his eyes. “Believe me.”

He does, as impossible as it is, he can see it shining through her - her hope, her kindness, her love, pouring out of her like sunshine.

With a large rough thumb, he wipes the tears from her cheeks, and he looks at her, taking in her radiant beauty, desperately wishing he could kiss her worry away.

Belle seems to have a similar thought, because quite suddenly, her soft pink lips are on his own and she is the one kissing him.

And it almost works - sort of.

His is not a human mouth, it is more of a muzzle, fanged and hairy and entirely the wrong shape for kissing, but she doesn’t seem to mind.

How can she not, he wonders, even as he begins to taste her, to tangle his fingers in her hair and pull her closer still.

Good god, her taste is heavenly.

Her body too, small and soft and warm, the feeling of her so close, it is incredible and even more so, as she climbs atop him.

When she pauses, breathless, and sits back to look at him, Belle is smiling.

“Why wouldn’t you kiss me that night?” she asks, stroking his brow, down his cheek and touching her fingertips to his lips just as she had done then.

“You remember that?”

He had been half hoping she wouldn’t.

“Of course,” she says, and then a little more shyly, “Perhaps you might think it wrong of me, but I would have welcomed you into my bed that night, had you not been so scared.”

He thinks there is some part of him that has known this all the while, and it comes as no surprise to him that she had seen his fear for what it was.

Somehow she has always seen him for what he truly is. 

And if he will admit it, he is still afraid, no matter how good she feels, no matter how much he wants her, and no matter how much she seems to want him too.

“Belle,” he says and she hushes him.

“I love you, and I do not need you to be anything more than you are.”

-

**Author's Note:**

> the poem and title comes from  
> machiavelli's mandragola, which is indeed a play on politics. he  
> knew something about love too.


End file.
